Copesa (Consorcio Periodístico de Chile) is one of the more important
Chilean
media conglomerate
Conglomerate or conglomeration may refer to:
* Conglomerate (company)
* Conglomerate (geology)
* Conglomerate (mathematics)
In popular culture:
* The Conglomerate (American group), a production crew and musical group founded by Busta Rhymes
** Co ...
. Copesa is controlled by
Álvaro Saieh
Álvaro Saieh Bendeck (born 14 September 1949) is a Colombian academic, economist, and businessman. He is the chairman of CorpGroup, one of Chile's largest conglomerates.
As of 2018, ''Forbes'' listed him as the 729th wealthiest person in the ...
, a Chilean business man.
Overview
Copesa was launched during the mid-1950s by the wealthy Pico-Cañas family. In the areas of
newspaper circulation, El Mercurio and Copesa exert an unchallenged media
duopoly
A duopoly (from Greek δύο, ''duo'' "two" and πωλεῖν, ''polein'' "to sell") is a type of oligopoly where two firms have dominant or exclusive control over a market. It is the most commonly studied form of oligopoly due to its simplicit ...
in Chile. Copesa's success was largely the work of two prominent members of the Chilean right-wing political and business sector, Álvaro Saieh and Carlos Abumohor. In November 1988, these two investors joined forces with other businesspeople and members of the government to revamp the indebted conglomerate. Saieh became the largest
shareholder
A shareholder (in the United States often referred to as stockholder) of a corporation is an individual or legal entity (such as another corporation, a body politic, a trust or partnership) that is registered by the corporation as the legal own ...
with 33% while Abumohor held 16.6%. A month later, in December 1988, Saileh took control of the political magazine ''Que Pasa'' that was incorporated into Copesa.
Copesa published the news daily ''
La Tercera
''La Tercera'' ( es, The Third One), formerly known as ''La Tercera de la Hora'' ('the third of the hour'), is a daily newspaper published in Santiago, Chile and owned by Copesa. It is ''El Mercurio''s closest competitor.
''La Tercera'' is part o ...
'', which is the second most read newspaper in Chile. In 2002, ''La Tercera'' had a 2002 daily circulation of about 210,000. Copesa also published three other
periodicals for national distribution: the popular magazine, ''
La Cuarta
''La Cuarta'' ( es, The Fourth One) is a Chilean daily tabloid and part of the Copesa group. The newspaper is famous for its tone and plebeian style of headlining stories. The newspaper began publication on 13 November 1984. On 17 November 201 ...
''; the free daily tabloid, ''
La Hora''; and the newsweekly, ''Qué Pasa'', which offered
political analyses of current events. In 2002, ''Qué Pasa'' had an approximate circulation of 20 thousand readers. Copesa created websites on the
Internet for its publications. The publisher also had affiliations with smaller-scale print and digital publishers. One such affiliation was with the digital company that produced "RadioZero," a music Internet site for younger audiences.
Copesa also owned Chilean airline
Aeronor Chile
Aeronor-Chile was a Chilean airline company. The airline was owned by another enterprise, named Copesa, which also owns the Chilean newspaper, La Tercera.
Fleet
*Fairchild F-27A
Accidents and incidents
*An Aeronor Fairchild F-27A on a domestic c ...
.
Non-media financial interests
Copesa has
financial
Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of fina ...
interest in other areas of the economy. Its financial investments have been largely channelled into the highly profitable private
pension fund
A pension fund, also known as a superannuation fund in some countries, is any plan, fund, or scheme which provides retirement income.
Pension funds typically have large amounts of money to invest and are the major investors in listed and priva ...
s (Associación de Fondos de Pensiones or AFPs) and into
real estate (Pena 1998). In 1992, this media conglomerate entered into a joint venture with the printing and publishing house Ediciones Chiloé. As a result of this agreement, they established Distribución y Servicios Meta, a company that distributes newspapers, magazines and books. Through this structure Copesa is able to print and distribute its own products.
See also
*
Corpbanca
Notes
{{reflist
Mass media companies of Chile
Investment companies of Chile
Mass media in Santiago